I was curious to see if the NY Times would like Romeo + Juliet, and was surprised to see nothing on 5/2. Today, Alastair Macaulay deigned to pronounce his disapproval. With an extra day to come up with good copy, what does he talk about? He disapproves first of the costumes, which he describes as "bargain-basement Italian Renaissance with mod-abstract squiggles." He then makes snide remarks about the set. (Apparently he didn't like that either.) He then returns to the costumes, sneering at their "main color scheme — Tybalt is yellow, Romeo blue, Mercutio purple." It seems to me that audiences in the third or fourth tier, like Alicia Alonso of the National Ballet of Cuba, are not always able to distinguish the dancers' faces clearly and thus are equally grateful for the main characters' readily distinguishable costumes (and of course the contrasting colors for the Capulets and Montagues). So why is this a problem for Mr. Macaulay? One can only speculate that perhaps his seat was too close to the stage.
Our friend concludes this peevish and shallow discussion with the remarkable statement that "[i]n the first half these designs are this production’s main problem." From which I infer that he didn't hate the first half of the ballet quite as much as he would have liked to.
Mr. Macaulay eventually gets around to commenting on the dance, and even reluctantly praises a few specific elements of the ballet. I suspect he is vastly knowledgeable about dance. But by this point in the review, it is pretty difficult to take his criticisms seriously.
No comments:
Post a Comment